Friggin’ ticks. That’s all I have to say. Those freakin’ #$#@$%#% ticks.

Last year my sweet Reboot became infected while we were on vacation. My parents saw her go from appearing to not feel well, to being so lame, she could not even be able to drag herself off the couch and walk. After a month of antibiotics, she made a full recovery.

Apparently it’s my turn now. The day before yesterday, I started popping the Aleve for a headache that wouldn’t go away. Very rare for me. I never even get sick. (We won’t talk about Lotusphere. Those responsible, you know who you are! Been there, blogged that!)

Last night I knew I felt terrible. By terrible, I mean having a neck so stiff and painful, that I’m at a loss for an appropriate simile or metaphor. Now THAT’S rare. I can come up with a simile or metaphor for anything. It’s a skill.

This morning, a lovely fever brought the whole package together nicely, along with a red circle on my shoulder. Not to mention the feeling that a 300-pound midget was permanently sitting on my chest, it felt so heavy. (ahhh… now she’s getting her imagery back!)

I was given a month’s supply of doxycycline, along with a warning to stay out of the sun. Noooo problem. I hope the symptoms go away in a few days, I’m really not sure how long the initial symptoms are supposed to last. At least I have a light week coming up. Not that I could do any of it, at this point. In the meantime, I’m on the couch (pretty much unable to move) with my lappy and wireless, and my darling hubby doing an awesome job taking care of me. If you see me on IM, say hi… I’ll be bored stiff (the jokes never stop, folks).

The only thing good that ever came out of ticks as far as I’m concerned is Patrick Warburton’s persona as the “big blue bug of justice”, aka, The Tick.

I guess it’s a little worth it for that.

I’ve said on many occasions how much Matt, myself, and our friends love to play board games.

A very small company called Cheapass Games noticed two observations about board games, as noted on their website: They a lot of money, and are the same in most ways, except for the board.

In their words, a board game usually consists of a board, instructions, and then the remaining parts such as dice, timers, counters, markers, and pencils can account for about 75% of the remaining cost of production which gets passed on to us, the consumers.

Cheapass Games has a solution to the problem. Their games consist of a board, instructions, and anything else unique to that game only. They tell you what extra pieces you need to “borrow” from another game, such as timers, dice, etc. As they put it, they’d rather invest in one good set of “gaming paraphernalia” rather than have twenty sets of crappy ones.

Because of this, the games are relatively inexpensive to buy, and take up a very small amount of space. In addition, the primary game creator over at Cheapass Games, James Ernest, is proving to be a brilliant mind in game design. His games are easy to learn, mind-bogglingly unique, and incredibly fun to play.

Our favorites:

Give Me The Brain!
This is a card game in which all players are Zombies, working at a restaurant called “Friedeys”. The bad news? There’s a lot of work to be done, and only one Brain to pass around. Be the first to aquire the Brain (dice) to get your tasks done and thus get rid of all your cards.

Each card is a “job” with other helper cards. Some jobs are one-handed, meaning you can do two in one turn. Other jobs require both hands, and you can only play one of them. However, you’re a zombie, so that “extra” hand you find lying around in a helper card can become handy to play another job.

This is probably the most entertaining (and quick) of all Cheapass games we’ve played. Not only is it fun to play, but the cards themselves are hysterical in both text and pictures. “Give me the Brain! I have to make a Cheezabunga!”

Kill Dr. Lucky
Kill Dr. Lucky is a board game that will probably take about an hour, but is incredibly fun. The board, cards and rulebook are provided, you need the people markers.

The board is set up with lots of numbered rooms. Dr. Lucky is a playerless character who moves from room to room also. Your job, as players, is to aquire a weapon card, manage to move to the same room Dr. Lucky is in, and kill him without any other player “seeing” you do it. By seeing, I mean being in any other room that has a line of sight in conjunction with the room you are in.

Strategy City, folks!

For the more optimistic people, there’s also Save Dr. Lucky.
This game reverses the strategy, except you now have to save Dr. Lucky, while making sure someone else is in your line of sight to watch you do it.

This game is especially fun because if you play this immediately after playing “Kill Dr. Lucky”, there’s a fun set of penalty rules for saying the wrong thing, ie. “I’m going to kill him with…” Gotcha! Wrong game, dude!

Deadwood
Deadwood is a fun board game about trying to make as much money as you can by being a movie extra. This is probably our favorite board game among all of them.

The game comes with rulebook, board, and cards, and you need to provide 6-sided dice to use as people markers, several more 6-sided dice to use as currency, and coins as markers.

Players use 6-sided dice to represent themselves, and the current good-role level. Upon making more money, you can go to the Audition house to pay money to “up” your dice, say from a 2 to a 3 and get better paying roles that way. At the end of the game, he who has the most moolah, wins!

I was looking over my careworn copy of “Life’s Little Instruction Book” that had been dredged out of the basement. Several entries in my copy stand out from all the others in the book, having been marked by a thick, yellow highlighter marker.

The book, by H. Jackson Brown, contains 511 little snippets and advice on how to live a happy and rewarding life.

I have *no* idea when I highlighted these early in high school. I only even vaguely remember doing it. In fact, I definately didn’t even remember at ALL until Matt showed me the book and said that he had enjoyed flipping through and seeing the ones I had marked. “Gimmee that!” I had said…

Aside from picking new ones as favorites (now that the house, car, job, and “real world” snippets pertain to me), it was interesting to see which ones I had particularly liked even then. Reading the entire book now, they are all wonderful ideas. Lots of them pertain to day to day activities. The funny thing is, a lot of them didn’t mean anything to me being a kid. In fact, all the ones I’d highlighted are pretty idealistic, when you look at them.

But I’d probably pick the same ones today anyway!

So without further ado, here’s the ones I highlighted when I was a kid:

1. Compliment three people every day.

16. Be the first to say hello.

37. Make new friends, but cherish the old ones.

39. Take lots of snapshots.

94. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who’ll never find out.

107. Smile a lot. It costs nothing and is beyond price.

157. Take time to smell the roses.

188. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

197. Don’t forget, a person’s greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

252. Take good care of those you love.

327. When you arrive at your job in the morning, let the first thing you say brighten everyone’s day.

456. Send your loved one flowers. Think of a reason later.

488. Make someone’s day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you.

Puss in Boots

Puss in Reboots. Nah…

Puss in Reboot? No…

Why, Puss IS Reboot!

And yes, I’m sure it goes without saying those red eyes were digitally altered. It’s just all too fun to go crazy with the camera while the doggie’s playing. Sock wars, her favorite game.

And when we looked at the results, we noticed a striking similarity!

I love watching movies, and then going to Internet Movie Database and reading the Trivia section of the movie to see if there’s anything interesting there.

After watching the movie Ghost Ship, I had to check out trivia for it.

As it turns out, one ship’s backstory was modeled after a real incident with a ship called the Andrea Doria. In fact, in the movie, there is a photo of a ship listing on one side in the ocean. That was a real photo of the Andrea Doria.

My curiousity was piqued.

A quick Google search yielded AndreaDoria.org, a site created by one of the survivors himself, who was on the ship when he was three years old. But it’s not just a little site about this ship, which sank off the coast of Nantucket in 1956 after colliding with another ship.

I clicked on a link titled, “The Events“, and still really only expected to read a quick story about what happened that night. Boy, was I wrong.

The author of the site had put together a timeline and narrative based on the recollections of survivors, crew members, and watchers. He has included real photographs, and passenger lists, and diagrams placed in the story where it happened.

I have never been as enthralled reading anything before.

Please, visit the Events page to start reading. But be warned, leave a few hours so that you can read it from start to finish. You won’t want to stop reading. The pictures, the events, you’ll feel like you went through it just like the survivors did. You’ll even go through it from the eyes of both captains on opposing ships… you’ll know the two ships were doomed even before their captains did.

You’ll read the actual messages the two ships sent to each other, and subsequent messages sent to other ships as the Andrea Doria realized it was listing so much, that lifeboats on the other side of the ship could not be used.

You’ll read about the passengers that switched rooms at the last minute, or went upstairs to play a late game of cards or made some other decision of fate that involved the rooms that got destroyed.

You’ll read about the other cruise ship that heard the S.O.S and had to make a split-second decision about the ramifications of bringing his 1500 passengers off-course to rescue the passengers of the Andrea Doria.

You’ll read about families that were split up and placed in seperate lifeboats and subsequent rescue ships, only to have to find each other at a crazy port of call in New York.

I had discovered this site last summer after watching Ghost Ship, and wanted to blog about it then. I also had wanted to email the site owner and let him know how much I had enjoyed reading about it, and how moved I was. I just visited the site now to link to it, and noticed a scrolling ticker at the top that announced that Anthony, the webmaster and Andrea Doria passenger, had died just this past October. That’s what I get for waiting. I’m really, really sad I never emailed him when I had the chance.

I read the ‘About Us’ page, and in the ‘Thanks’ section on the page, he wrote, ‘My mother, Angela Grillo, who had the courage to drop me off the side of the ship to save me.’ He also dedicated the site to the people that died during the collision.

And yes, the story is about a sinking ship, but remember - it’s also about the greatest marine rescue ever.